


epistolary: the ygo drabble series

by setokaibas



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Genre: Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-14
Updated: 2017-03-31
Packaged: 2018-10-04 16:41:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 5,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10283378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/setokaibas/pseuds/setokaibas
Summary: a collection of ygo drabbles originally done for tumblr. includes the following quasiplatonically: rivalshipping, puppyshipping (whatevershipping), puzzleshipping, peachshipping, and a bakura/jounouchi/pegasus oneshot.REQUESTS ARE OPEN. please comment with your request if you want one, but please no nsfw.





	1. initiation

**Author's Note:**

> bakura learns what it means to be afraid. warning: contains dark themes and yami bakura.  
> thank you for reading and have a blessed day. please leave a comment.

_he didn't ask for this to happen to him._

at least, that’s what his hands say as they shake around his soda cup the day after the rest of his adopted relatives arrive for the funeral. _were they even his relatives?_

(all he can see is the pounds his father waved in front of the gravekeeper, begging for a piece of the history he had searched for over all those years–)

he shakes his head, sips his soda. the straw crackles and his lap is wet. the relatives are looking at him in horror. where did the rest of his soda go?

_(they all whisper, he crushed it! poor boy, he needs to be looked at.)_

suddenly, his chest hurts. there is something digging into him, but something inside says _stiff upper lip, stiff upper lip_. the pain doesn’t go away. it feels like bloodthirsty needles in his soft heart until they find somewhere for him to go to be examined by the doctor.

then, something weird happens, he thinks. everything is black- and then- he’s laying on the table and the doctor above him has a blank face. forms are signed, saying he’s fine (he’s not, in the end), and off he goes.

on the train ride to his new home he wonders what it is like to have friends.

something digs into his chest again. he looks around, and like a good boy, only looks down the collar of his shirt. a golden eye looks up at him from his heart, and he wants to scream, cry– but it looks at him. a voice rasps into his ear, maybe his, maybe a dream?

it whispers into his little mind, takes the cup of water and gives the serviceperson a little boy’s sympathetic look.

_i’m the only friend you’ll ever need._


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a collection of ygo drabbles originally done for tumblr. includes the following quasiplatonically: rivalshipping, puppyshipping (whatevershipping), puzzleshipping, a bakura oneshot, and a jounouchi oneshot.  
> REQUESTS ARE OPEN. please comment with your request if you want one, but please no nsfw.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whatevershipping. kaiba can't hate jounouchi as much as he wants to.   
> thank you for reading, and have a blessed day. please comment if you can.

it’s all wheeler’s fault that kaiba hasn’t been able to work on anything for the past two hours.

kaiba rakes his hand through his hair, sits back down at his desk after pacing back and forth for the previous ten minutes. the equations, the variables, the designs– all of them weren’t coming together. he snarled at the gibberish on his desk. it was all awful, and it was _his_ fault.

wheeler, jounouchi, whatever all the second-rate duelists were calling him these days.

he looks up at the clock; an 0800 mockingly blinks at him from the wall, and kaiba nearly loses to gozaburo in his chess game. he hears mokuba, who he knows likes that group of destiny-loving morons, say:

_“big bro, isn’t jounouchi cool?”_

something moves inside of seto, painful but somehow bigger than the stone in his heart. it reverberates into his pelvis, and he feels the weight of his body change. the damned organ in his chest vibrates a rhythm like mokuba’s fear, and he wills it to slow. he shouldn’t feel this way, not over a blonde-haired tagalong who–although he did show some promise on rare occasions– kept him from attaining the glory he deserved.

his hands shake, with something, and he puts his head in his hands. what was this, this weakness in his heart? seto kaiba was not weak. seto kaiba did not act this way. he was superior, more enlightened, nietzche’s brainchild!

he looks at his hands.

_damn it._

_he was human._

he picks up the phone, calls mokuba. his brother answers, his bright voice dispelling some of the strange aura around his mind, but still seto says: “make sure jounouchi is late to the next tournament.”

(he knows mokuba will still let him through, and he waits for the next sighting of that blonde hair with an abstract thirst.)


	3. pensive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a collection of ygo drabbles originally done for tumblr. includes the following quasiplatonically: rivalshipping, puppyshipping (whatevershipping), puzzleshipping, a bakura oneshot, and a jounouchi oneshot.  
> REQUESTS ARE OPEN. please comment with your request if you want one, but please no nsfw.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> jounouchi oneshot. contrary to popular opinion, jounouchi thinks a lot.   
> thank you for reading, and have a blessed day. please leave a comment.

jounouchi tapped his pencil on the pile of papers he called his homework. or would have called homework, if any of it was actually done.

he would admit, at some times he could be such a procrastinator that it ended up hurting him. having to ask yugi for help on the one paper that made no sense just before the last english exam had been pretty embarrassing. 

sure, the guy was his friend, but admitting he was dyslexic was another matter. 

katsuya dropped his pencil on the table and kicked back, propping his sock-clad feet up on the table. the stretch of his legs felt good, and he felt the impulse to go out for a run, punch something to get out all the anger. everyone always made a comment about how violent he could be. he knew that, could feel the glass crunching into bruised knuckles all those years ago and the crack of some moron’s jaw underneath his fist. he wasn’t proud of it, but damn, it felt good to just let it all out every once in a while. 

he’d be honest: he didn’t hate school. learning some of the stuff was fun, but the teachers didn’t care that he couldn’t read black-on-white. they always said _try harder,_ just like his father the deadbeat. maybe, jounouchi thought, the man who walked out on him could have done something to help if he’d just not been who he was. 

but who cared about all that?

he rolled his shoulders, feeling the once-broken joint do a familiar pop. the sound was sickening, but it didn’t bother him anymore. it was just a part of who he was.

him, the duel monsters badass, or so he told himself as he imagined giving kaiba a taste of his own medicine. the creep was too rich for katsuya’s liking; if he had some of that money, he would have fixed shizuka’s eyes a lifetime ago. maybe bribed his parents out of the divorce– but then again, that would never have worked. 

he felt his face pulled down into a frown, and for once it actually suited his mood until something caught his gaze. the red-eyes from the top of his deck stared at him from the duel disk on the corner of his desk, and he slid the whole thing closer to him. pulling the dragon from his deck and fanning the remaining out, jounouchi flipped through all the cards he could remember. before he knew it, he felt a smile come to his face, and the small light came back to his eyes.

no matter how much he messed up in school, he always had duel monsters. one day, he’d finally stick it to kaiba and make the jerk regret his insults.

maybe it wasn’t so bad, being jounouchi.


	4. consumption

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a collection of ygo drabbles originally done for tumblr. includes the following quasiplatonically: rivalshipping, puppyshipping (whatevershipping), puzzleshipping, a bakura oneshot, and a jounouchi oneshot.  
> REQUESTS ARE OPEN. please comment with your request if you want one, but please no nsfw.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rivalshipping. yugi loves burgers and kaiba doesn't.  
> thank you for reading and have a blessed day. please leave a comment.

seto thought it a miracle he’d managed to sit in such a place for that long.

the fuzzy neon of burger world spat and cracked outside the chipped window of the booth he and his newly appointed best friend were sharing. it glinted off of the black in the coat he was wearing, and refracted onto the slim blue ring mokuba had given him for his birthday to create a bluish glow in the dimness. 

“that doesn’t even look appetizing.”

the boy across from him, no longer a boy by the standards of many, looked up at kaiba with a slightly saddened look on his face. the older observed that yugi’s lips were coated with ketchup from the half-eaten burger in his hands, and pushed a napkin slightly towards the king of games. 

“you ought to wipe your mouth.”

the slightly sad expression on yugi’s face got worse for a moment before he perked up again. a smile found its way onto his mouth, and he merely beamed at kaiba in the childlike way so found among his friends. 

“oh, don’t worry. i will, once i finish.”

kaiba looked down at his own food, the only remotely healthy thing the restaurant served. with a coupon from anzu via the wheedling of his brother, seto had managed to recover a grilled chicken salad from the fridge behind the counter. it was limp, the cheese gamy, but he still lifted a bite into his mouth in order to maintain a semblance of propriety. 

as he ate, he watched the duelist across from him. their relationship was a rather strange being, the product of the weakness of his heart which once only belonged to mokuba. perhaps he owed his respect to yugi for being the only worthy rival he had ever had, but the feeling he had now, he suspected, was something entirely anomalous to his mind. it fluttered, beat, in his throat when he saw the swallow yugi took of his cheap american food.

it jumped beyond his control when he suddenly found a bite lifted across to him. 

the arms of the shorter man reached him save a few centimeters of the wide table, and kaiba deliberately waited a few seconds before looking from the black-clad youth to the greasy concoction on the end of the fork.

a hopeful voice: “just try it.”

why was he doing this? kaiba wondered as his mouth moved against his will to reach for that portion of yugi’s meal. his lips closed around it, and he saw what looked like blushing embarrassment flit over yugi’s face as he took it from the fork and began to chew. as he did, he realized: perhaps it was acceptable, if given by the hand that had challenged him. 

“do.. you really think that?”

too late, kaiba realized he had voiced his thoughts aloud. sitting up straight and looking at the warhol print on the wall, he said a curse word under his breath before giving out a sigh. 

“i suppose so.”

the look on yugi’s face was far better than any meal he ate the next day.


	5. tangled

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a collection of ygo drabbles originally done for tumblr. includes the following quasiplatonically: rivalshipping, puppyshipping (whatevershipping), puzzleshipping, a bakura oneshot, and a jounouchi oneshot.  
> REQUESTS ARE OPEN. please comment with your request if you want one, but please no nsfw.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> puzzleshipping (yugi/atem). one day, yugi regrets his pseudo-kinky outfit choices.   
> thank you for reading and have a blessed day. please leave a comment.

"ouch!”

yugi knew it wasn’t impossible that it would happen, getting his wrist caught in the jagged rear folds of his hair. but boy, he never knew it would hurt as much as it did now. again he fiddled uselessly with his other hand at the knot he had managed to create while dressing himself in his new spiked jewelry (a gift from the ever-sweet anzu), but he gave out a small moan as another pain shot into his scalp. he reached up with his free hand to feel the sore spot on his scalp– and it was just as he had suspected.

the bracelet, during his fumbling attempts to help himself, had wandered even further into the red-black portion of his hair. the once-small knot in his locks had gained quite a few more strands in its greedy hold, and the next accidental wince of regret had him almost crying. yugi figured after a few further attempts at detangling that it was better to stay still, so he carefully held his wrist in place and walked over to his dresser. anzu wasn’t busy, being that she didn’t have a dance class, so maybe she would have a suggestion–

yugi suddenly found his hand stayed by the dark, mellifluous tones of his other self. as his partner spoke, the puzzle felt warm against his abdomen, sending something flitting beneath into a group of butterflies.

_“aibou, do you need help?”_

yugi felt his face grow red, and a blush stained itself down the front of his neck. he knew the other didn’t quite approve of his choice in fashion, but if he was offering–

“that’s okay. i think i’ll just call anzu.”

yugi felt a presence next to him, the familiar one of his partner, and he looked over to see the eerily similar violet eyes he had grown so accustomed to. they shone back at him with some strange emotion, though the curled grin on the other’s face was enough to hint at the close amusement only they shared.

then– another purr, one that bordered between pleasure and concern.

“ _don’t be so stubborn. i can help you with this.”_

“how?”

a dark look, one yugi only saw when the eventual pharaoh spoke of the time he could not remember, crossed yami’s face. the other’s voice cracked infinitesimally as he spoke, and yugi noted it with the same visceral pain as that in his scalp.

_“somehow.. i just know how.”_

yugi let his body fall away into the other’s control, and watched in amazement as his partner grasped the balled hair in his fingertips and managed to extricate it with only a few minutes of manipulation. again, yugi vibrated with something strange at the feeling of being so gently touched, and his stomach vibrated oddly.

then his other self nudged yugi back into control of his body. as soon as sensation began to connect in yugi’s brain again, he felt a soft, wet press on the back of his neck, and a barely-there breath on the shell of his ear.

_“perhaps you should consider revamping your wardrobe.”_


	6. anxiety

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for @preciousorgel on tumblr; puzzleshipping (yugi/atem).
> 
> summary: yugi has anxiety about everything that is going on in his life, but the person he knows the best is there to comfort him in the best of ways.

yugi can’t stop thinking about it, what happened that day. 

_jounouchi’s voice, distorted and warped– the slight bleeding from his lips– the timer counting down– jounouchi’s face as he plunged down into the cold water, his duel disk sinking to the bottom while anzu’s head was overshadowed by a massive weight–_

the small duelist covered his head with the duvet on his bed to block out the light from the street. he needed to sleep, he knew that, but his soul ached irreparably from its nesting place near his heart. he remembers briefly from history class that the ancient egyptians thought the soul resided there, secluded in its cradle. at that moment, such seemed awfully probable. but what were the thin thoughts running through his mind to anyone in the first place? he loved his friends, but none of them would ever want to hear of _this_. right? his chest hurt from the rapid inhalations he was taking, and they only got worse, worse– until he felt a certain warmth next to his belly. 

it spread up his body and into his mind until a certain peace ordered his troubled thoughts. invisible hands smoothed his hair back; yugi could feel it rustle against the pillow he was hunched under. sock feet curl against barely-solid calves, and a kiss is pressed to yugi’s trembling brow.

_what troubles you, aibou?_

the mellifluous, honey voice of his other self coated his spine and moved in waves up into his ears. the stroke of a strong hand on his back helped the breath come more easily into his lungs, and yugi finally finds the courage to speak.

“everything, mou hitori no boku.”

the strokes continue, more languid, more soft. yugi presses his cheek to the chest of his other self, and he fits perfectly in the hollow in the pharaoh’s clavicle. he can feel the strength there; he closes his eyes, and lets their bond resonate in the invisible cord of power there had always been between their two souls.

a soft whisper in his ear- _there is no need to be afraid, my heart. the trouble has passed. sleep._

yugi looked up at the violet eyes that accompanied him every second of the day since he put on the puzzle. “but– i can’t..”

he felt himself being squeezed more tightly, defined arms lulling him into unconsciousness. _sleep. i am here._

it took him twenty minutes of listening to the breath of his other self, but eventually the soft caresses on his head convince his mind to finally leave him alone. he dreams of a hand, holding his in some lost time where desert breath whistled against his fair skin, and in it he can _breathe_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading, and have a blessed day! please leave a comment if you can.


	7. scheme

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for @pharaoh-ink; a pegasus oneshot focused on his thoughts during duelist kingdom.

pegasus delicately dabbed his mouth at the savory taste of another of his butler’s meals. it had been refreshing, as usual, but still some indeterminate feeling was missing from the tip of his tongue. it sparked in the air, quite like his favorite feeling, the sight of another defeat in his tournament.

he wanted everyone to have fun, but seeing yugi-kun get closer and closer to his goal felt exhilarating somehow, and he mentally ran over the data his millennium eye had so skillfully provided him. 

this is what it felt like to be young again, he mused as the wine in his glass swirled and swirled its beautifully red content around. it mesmerized him for just a moment, the beauty of it, the long dinner table in front seeming so long and ugly in comparison. he felt a strange longing in his heart, all at once, for his dear cecilia. 

cecilia! cecilia! the love of his heart, stolen from him by the evil of this world. she would be so proud of him for making the children pleased. after all, he loved the same things as they did- cartoons, the lovable immortal things. they laughed and played with such beauty, and pegasus smiled to think thoughts of turning the beloved dark magician into a toon. he hoped yugi would love the toon as much as he did; if not, then he would just have to take it from him and love it as it should be loved.

that was his goal, after all, to help everyone have the best time playing duel monsters as they could. that is why people who made the game difficult and snobby had to be stopped, before they could ruin his toon world (like that nasty kaiba-boy who hoarded all his cards despite being a developer of the duel disk).

pegasus finished his glass and then signaled for the butler to pour him another one. as he did so, the toon blue-eyes on its label seemed to give a small roar, and the gaming mogul smiled. 

tomorrow, he could share his love with both of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading and have a blessed day. please leave a comment or request if you can.


	8. head games

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> summary: kaiba and yugi play video games together, and a certain intruder looks in with some envy.

kaiba’s eyes were starting to hurt, and that was saying a lot. 

he spent more hours staring at screens than even he would occasionally care to admit, but eight of them in a row seemed to be giving even him a headache. he swung at yugi’s fighter with his cartoon hammer and adjusted the blanket on his lap quickly before using his left hand to narrowly avoid the meteor punch that the other’s character nearly dealt him. he took some damage from being in the radius of the punch anyway, and he could hear yugi give out a small cheer at the slight dock of his life points. 

kaiba blinked once before turning to yugi briefly. the small duelist’s hair was disheveled from its normal spikiness, and yellow curls ran in rivulets down the front of his face. yet, as through some veritable miracle, the younger boy’s vision was not obstructed, and he continued to fight kaiba’s character with a small smile on his face. his brow was scrunched ever so slightly in concentration, and kaiba let that be his reminder to turn back to the game.

after a few more rounds of the fighting game– most of which kaiba won by a large margin– yugi threw his controller down onto the blanket in exasperation and gave kaiba a barely visible pout. 

“kaiba-kun, not only are you a great duelist, but you’re beating me at this, too? no wonder jounouchi-kun gets frustrated when he duels you.”

kaiba looked at yugi with slight venom. he supposed on the surface yugi had meant his words as a compliment, but under the surface he could sense the insult that was waiting to prove him wrong about everything that was transpiring.

“don’t mock me, yugi.”

yugi looked at the brown-haired duelist, suddenly serious. he peered up at kaiba, and seto felt the strange urge to look away from the glistening depths of his violet eyes, which glowed with something  he couldn’t quite grasp.

“whoa, kaiba-kun. that was a compliment. do you really think i would give a compliment to someone who beat me at something without a good motivation?”

seto’s eyes narrowed in response. “i suppose not.”

yugi’s small smile returned to his face, and he looked at kaiba as he gave a small stretch upward. the now heavier muscles of his forearms played in the evening light against the silver of his signature bracelets. kaiba met his gaze with the signature composed look he was known for, and yugi chortled. 

kaiba gave a small ‘tch’ as he turned towards the game controller. he stretched out his forearms in practiced motions, only to be assaulted halfway through by a small, black-haired mass. 

kaiba quickly lifted up the small mass, thinking it to be yugi, only to find a wriggling, sour-faced mokuba in his arms.

“mokuba, what the hell are you doing here?”

his younger sibling crossed his arms and gave seto a hard look. 

“don’t give me that, seto. yugi-kun invited me over here two weeks ago, just after he called you. now move over. i’ve been begging the butler for weeks to buy us this game, but _no_ , he’s been too busy with work for you.”

seto, as he was wont to do when mokuba ranted at him, figured it would cause less problems in the end to acquiesce. he set mokuba in his lap and retrieved the controller with long fingers. 

they ended up sitting there for two hours more, and seto swore he’d take a chair from the game shop they next time they came over to play yugi’s games.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please leave a comment or kudos if you can! thanks for reading and have a blessed day. feel free to request a drabble.


	9. sloppy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> peachshipping (yugi/anzu).
> 
> summary: yugi is actually a messy eater, and anzu gets sick of cleaning up after him when a long day at the studio strikes. happens when they’re both a little older, about 20ish.

normally, anzu found yugi’s tendency to leave sauce on his mouth while eating virtually anything endearing. 

after having to work an extra lesson at her ballet studio because of one of her students being tardy again, however? not so much. the student’s parent had been incredibly rude compared to those of the student she had in america (to most everyone’s surprise), and her residual anger spat quickly underneath the surface of her skin. as she stomped into the entrance to her and yugi’s apartment at about 12 am, she was boiling mad, her hands dusted lightly with the rosin from her shoes and the practice room floor. 

so, when she saw jounouchi and her soon-to-be husband sitting on the couch across from the new TV yugi had bought with his latest game sale revenue, immediately she felt the helpless need to yell. momentarily, she took pleasure in shooting jounouchi a venomous look, and he quickly said goodbye to yugi before bundling past her with little more than a pat on the shoulder. 

when yugi looked up at her with ketchup on his face, however, it was too late for her to do anything about the words set to hiss out of her mouth.

“mutou yugi, what is this absolute pigsty of a room that i am seeing right now? you are not a teenager, you’re not honda, and you’re definitely not damn jounouchi. the state of this room is despicable, so clean it up now before i come over there and rip you a new one.”

to her frustration, all yugi did was clean his mouth before he continued to look at her. he had grown into his body more, looking like the pharaoh who shared his body all those years ago, but the softness of his jaw and the fact that he still only stood over her by a few centimeters made it impossible to conflate the two (as she had once done, which was one of the biggest mistakes she had ever made). her frustration won out over the calming effect of her fiance’s aura, and she cast her bag and keys down onto the floor before marching over to grab a spare paper sack and clean it up herself. 

she cursed men in a low mumble as she picked up the wrappers and straw papers, nearly completing her entire task before feeling the bag taken from her hands. yugi shifted behind her, and he picked up the ten remaining papers with his slightly larger hands in what seemed like an instant before he rolled the sack down and deposited it in the trash can nearby. 

anzu drew in a breath, trying to force her tendency to rant down, only to feel her body pulled against yugi’s in a hug. it took her a moment to register the firm press of his muscled front against her softer abdomen, but she felt her annoyance dissipate gradually as she did so. a sudden sense of guilt rose in her as she realized his perspective. he had been having a fun night with jounouchi when his fiance, for no reason, had suddenly dismissed one of her closest friends coldly and began to yell at him for something as insignificant as a small pile of hamburger wrappers and fry boxes. 

she looked up to see yugi’s face, slightly wrinkled in concern, before she remembered the question he had asked her at the beginning: 

“anzu, what’s wrong?”

if it was possible, she felt like even more of a fool in that very moment, and she looked down in shame.

“i’m just angry at this kid from the ballet studio. she showed up an hour late, and her parents demanded that i stay and help her rather than her waiting until her next appointment two weeks from now.”

to his credit, yugi gave an understanding noise. “i can see why you would be angry about that. if i had to manage a dueling student who was like that, kaiba would write them up immediately. it was very kind of you to stay and help them.”

“i’m sorry, yugi. i’m not mad at you, and i shouldn’t have yelled. it was my fault for overextending myself, and–”

she found her lips occupied by a commanding yet soft kiss, which tasted faintly of burger world, and anzu smiled into it as she allowed yugi to dispel the last vestiges of her negative thoughts. despite her occasional anger at yugi for the small things, their history together always won out; _that was the beauty in them_ , she thought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks you for reading and have a blessed day! please leave a comment or request if you can.


	10. irony

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> kaiba and yugi have a fight, anzu is comforting, and mokuba plays the role of his brother's emotional side.

“Yugi, this is ridiculous. We scheduled this dinner meeting three weeks ago.”

Yugi ran his hand through his hair. He hated doing this at all, but it hurt too much to see Kaiba when his mind was so disjointed. Dealing with the older duelist required a level of kindness that was almost a gift from Anzu’s good aura, and he felt drained. 

“I know, Kaiba. I know. Just.. can we meet next week instead? I know you’ll want to see prints of the plans for my game, and I’ve been struggling to convert them into a file type that can send.”

Kaiba’s voice was cold from the other end. “I have other plans. Contact me when you’re ready.” The phone suddenly went dead, and Yugi felt his hand slacken around the receiver. He felt Anzu come into their bedroom behind him, and he looked back at her, a sigh issuing from his lips. 

“Can we take a nap?”

Anzu made a strangled noise. “Yugi… this isn’t like you. You’re usually bustling with energy at this time of night.” Her eyes narrowed in suspicion. “What did Kaiba say? Did he go off on you again?”

Yugi sighed. “No, Anzu. It’s. . Atem. He’s in my mind again. Kaiba just reminded me of what was already there.”

To her credit, Anzu simply took him into her arms for a time and let him breathe  there, winding her fingers comfortingly in the jagged yellow bangs of his hair. He in all truth hated almost crying over Atem when the pharaoh hadn’t wanted his sorrow (he knew Atem was happy, getting to rest after thousands of years of darkness), but the echoing nothing in his mind just left space for the negative hollows of depression he felt every once in awhile. 

Eventually, the phone rang, and Yugi saw it was a KaibaCorp number; he transferred the call to his study and jogged to the desk there. Curious, he picked up the phone quickly, Anzu having long since stepped out politely to continue her exercise routine. 

“Hey, Yugi. I’m sorry my older brother was a jerk. I’m making him come over now to apologize to you.”

“Mokuba-kun, that’s not necessary, but I appreciate the thought.”

“Too bad you hadn’t told me sooner; I think he’s already there.”

Yugi could hear Anzu restraining her frustration as she greeted Kaiba at the door to their apartment and forced him into the flow of conversation.  He handled it well, as expected, and Yugi noted that Anzu had purposely stopped him in the living area. 

“He doesn’t want to receive guests right now. I’ll apologize to him for you, given that I _know_ Mokuba _made_ you come over.”

“Mrs. Mutou,” he heard Kaiba say with deliberate emphasis, “it’s quite interesting that you purport to know my intentions for apologizing to your husband.”

Yugi knew the look Anzu must have been giving Kaiba very well, and a huff followed her likely change of expression. “Fine, Kaiba. But if Yugi so much as peeps to me about you insulting him, I will not hesitate to remove you from our home. Have I made myself absolutely clear?”

“ _Crystal_ ,” he heard Kaiba mutter as the older duelist approached the door to the study Yugi spent most of his time in and pass through the threshold. However, Yugi waited a moment before acknowledging Kaiba’s presence, purposely examining his appearance from the corner of his eye. The amusing dishabille of the older’s hair betrayed the browbeating he must have taken from Mokuba, but his appearance was otherwise as immaculate as ever. Yugi looked up at Kaiba and made a motion to speak, but the older raised a hand. 

“It was made clear to me by Mokuba that I was rude in the way I spoke to you. On a certain level, I can respect your bond with Atem, so I will refrain from commenting on the current effects of such. However, your being tardy on the plans for the investment you are expecting me to fund is unacceptable.”

Then, a breath, almost hesitant- “I will give you three extra days to rework the file format. I expect them in my email no later than Wednesday morning, 0800.”

Yugi felt a flimsy smile flicker onto his lips. “Thank you, Kaiba.”

Kaiba’s expression didn’t change, but his eyes flickered. “Mokuba also told me to give you.. this.”

Before Yugi could respond, the firm hug Kaiba gave the shorter man was over, and the older quickly exited the office with a nod before saying a curt goodbye to Anzu and leaving the apartment. Yugi sat back in his chair, a bit disoriented, and he saw Anzu hesitating at the doorway. She pursed her lips, as confused as her husband was at that moment.

“Am I tired and delusional, or did Kaiba hug you?”

Yugi grinned, the pain of Atem’s absence fading a little bit. “It was from Mokuba.”


End file.
